Twitter recently announced they will no longer support free access to the Twitter API. Everyone seems up in arms about it and I can’t figure out what an API even is. What would doing something like this actually affect?
I’ve tried looking up what an API is, but I can’t really wrap my head around it.
Edit: I’ve had so many responses to read through and there’s been a ton of helpful explanations! Much appreciated everyone 🙂 thanks for keeping this doofus in the know
In: 419
API stands for “Application Programming Interface”. It’s basically a way for one system to communicate to another system. In the case of twitter, it’s a way for someone to create their own “Twitter” app, that can send tweets, read tweets, like, share, etc all without being the official Twitter app.
Other uses would be things like having an API that lets you control your smart lights in your house. You can use the app that is built for your specific lights. But if you want to use your google assistant or whatever, what is actually happening is you’re telling google to “talk to” your lights. It does this “talking” with the API. So you tell google “Turn off my lights”, and Google in turn sends a message using the API to the lights to do that action.
People are “up in arms” about Twitter removing their API because it means that you can’t make your own Twitter app, you’d be forced to use their official app or the website. There are a few third-party (e.g. made by people who don’t work for Twitter) apps for Twitter that extend functionality and/or look “better”, and people want the option to use those apps. Once the API is removed though, those apps have no way to communicate with the Twitter servers, so they wont be able to do a lot of what they do.
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